Closely related to my previous post is the whole issue of data portability. Today social networks are making it as hard as possible for people to take their data with them when they want to leave (or even if they just want to double or triple up on social networks). This is sadly reminiscent of the fight the mobile operators put up when they had to implement number portability.
Both are bad approaches because they seek to rely on artificial barriers to entry/exit rather than genuine competitive differentiation in their products. If wireless carrier A was good enough, it wouldn’t have to worry about number portability because no subscriber would want to go to carrier B. Ditto with social networks. Facebook should be trying to make the experience it offers to its members as good as possible, rather than trying to raise the bar to data portability as high as possible.
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